The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus) (16 page)

“What did you just do?” Triton stared at the frozen giant in wonder.

Sweat poured down my face as the giant struggled against the shield. Surely there was an easier way to do this, but my knowledge was limited. Wrenching the shield in half, I brought the giant down to his knees. He still towered above me like a tree, but I could look up and meet his eyes.

“Stop struggling.” I poured every bit of my charm into that order. Fury and terror added weight to my voice, forging it into a force so strong the giant may have listened without the charm.

But I wasn’t going to take that chance.

The giant stopped.

“Persephone,” Triton whimpered.

Right.
I shook myself free of the horror and disgust and addressed the giant with a firm voice. “I’m going to release the shield. Do not move.”

With baited breath, I dropped the shield. The thunder of splitting trees and stomping feet vibrated through the forest as the rest of the giants approached. “Tell them you don’t know where we are. Protect us.”

The giant nodded. I pulled Triton behind the giant’s right foot and cast another shield, blocking us from sight and sound.

“Okay.” I knelt beside Triton and touched the tree branch. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead.

“It hurts,” he whimpered.

The giants gathered around us, eclipsing the sun. They spoke in a guttural language, shaking the earth with their gesturing.
Please let me be able to fix this.
I took a deep breath and yanked the bark free from Triton’s flesh, flinching when he yelled and writhed, his fingers digging violent gouges into the ground. He hit the edge of the shield with a thud. I gritted my teeth against the strain of keeping the giant charmed and the shield in place.

My hands were slick with blood, sweat, and desperation. Triton stopped struggling, eyes going glassy.

“No, you don’t.” I pulled more power through me, and Triton’s flesh knit together beneath my hand. My vision blurred.

When the giants thundered out of the clearing, the charmed one stayed behind. Dropping the shield, I told him, “Go, and forget your part in this.” The ground shook as he walked away. I counted to a hundred before dropping the charm.

“Thanks!” Triton stared at me wide-eyed. “You’re… How did you do all that at once?”

I shook my head, too relieved to care how I’d pulled that off, and struggled to my feet, clutching my necklace like a lifeline. “Let’s find somewhere safe for the night, ’kay?”

“Safe, huh?” Triton offered me his hand. “How do you feel about safe-ish?”

Chapter XXXI

Aphrodite

“You went without me?” Melissa exclaimed. She’d pulled me into Persephone’s room the minute I’d finished showing Hephaestus around and making introductions. “I thought we had an understanding.”

“You were busy with Orpheus.” I yawned, flopping down on Persephone’s papasan chair decorated with yet another flower pattern.

Melissa muttered something under her breath and snatched a fresh shirt from her bag. She changed clothes like five times a day now that we were sharing a roof with so many hot guys. They were fun to look at. I couldn’t tell if Melissa was trying to impress them with her vast wardrobe, or if she was just frustrated that they seemed unimpressed and was not going to give up until she found an outfit that demanded their notice. Either way, I don’t know why she bothered. She could run around naked and they probably wouldn’t react. That was no reflection on her. Gods and nymphs go way back, but she was under Demeter’s protection, and no one would risk losing rights to live in this realm for a mere nymph.

“You should have waited.” She shimmied into a new skirt.

A deep, dark bruise just below her collarbone caught my eye, and I bolted upright. “Is that what I think it is?”

Melissa flushed, covering the hickey with her hand. “It’s not your business.”

I pretended to be scandalized. “He’s married!”

“Oh, don’t be stupid!” Melissa snapped, shoving a silky shirt over her head. “I wouldn’t make out with Orpheus.”

“Aw, come on. I’m not going to judge you for getting some action while your best friend is missing.”
Might put you in a better mood,
I thought, though the idea of Melissa being happy and
not
whining all the time was unimaginable. What would she talk about?

Melissa ignored my teasing, but I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easy. Not after the hard time she’d given me. Plus, I was really curious who would want to make out with Melissa. Who would risk pissing off Demeter? Adonis, maybe?

A flash of envy passed through me, but I suppressed it. I wasn’t interested in Adonis.

“Aw, come on, who’s the lucky guy?”

“Joel,” she snapped.

My smile froze. “Sorry, what?”

“This isn’t new. I had it when I died, and now it’s never,
ever
going away. Happy?”

My mouth hung open like I was some kind of slack-jawed idiot. Melissa looked close to tears. I scrambled for something to say to make her feel better. “He always had a thing for nymphs.”

Melissa laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. She swiped at her eyes angrily and turned her back to me, taking deep breaths.

“Why didn’t you say anything when she got back? I don’t think she would have spent so much time with him had she known—”

“Gee, that makes me feel
much
better. What was I supposed to tell her?” Melissa’s voice was thick. “Hey, Persephone, thanks for bringing me back from the dead and all, but while you were stuck in the Underworld, fearing for your life, I was having a blast here on the surface with the guy you’ve been crushing on all year.”

“She had Hades,” I pointed out. “It wasn’t like she was thinking about Joel while she was down there.”

“He didn’t talk to me after…” She trailed off, gathering her hair into a ponytail at the base of her neck. “I thought it was me. Boreas had me for a while, and then I was dealing with the whole coming back to life thing. It wasn’t until school started I even tried to track him down, and by then he’d moved on. Gods, I was so stupid. I
was
worried about Persephone when she was down in the Underworld. But…I was also relieved. Everything in my life revolved around her, and for the first time, I was free of it.”

Melissa shook her head. “You don’t know what it’s like to have your whole life spelled out for you, and I couldn’t even be mad at her because she didn’t know. She’s my best friend. I love her like a sister, but she’s my obligation. And I thought he—”

Her eyes closed. “Whatever, I was wrong. He was just keeping tabs on me to use against her. I make a good hostage.”

I nodded. “You really do.”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Did he charm you?”

She grabbed a white wooden brush—with yellow daisies carved and painted in an intricate pattern running up the handle—from Persephone’s dresser. “No. I think I’m immune. Persephone’s never charmed me, and as much as I’d like to think it’s because I’m her best friend, I watched her come into her charm. She had
no
control over it.”

Immunity could be handy. “Don’t tell anyone else.” Melissa would make an ideal spy in a room full of Zeus’ offspring who were used to charming mortals into forgetting what they’d just heard. “When Persephone gets back, she can try to charm you to confirm, but you’re probably right. Nymphs had a higher tolerance to that kind of thing.”

“Mmm,” she agreed, pulling her hair up into a ponytail and twisting a purple scrunchie into place. “I think that makes it worse though. That I wasn’t charmed. I don’t have that excuse, you know, for not being able to see through him. For being tricked, or whatever. It was all me.”

“Worse.” Any sympathy I felt for her vanished. Something in my voice must have sounded off, because Melissa stopped fiddling with her hair and studied my reflection in the mirror.

I let out a disgusted sigh. “You know, every time I think I’m starting to like you, that you’re not just beneath me, you open your mouth and something stupid falls out.”

Indignation flashed in Melissa’s eyes but I continued, heedless of her rage. “You have no idea, none, what it’s like not to have a choice. To
have
to listen and obey. To feel your body controlled by someone else, moved around like a puppet, and to be absolutely
powerless
to stop it—”

“Aphrodite.” Her voice was low and sympathetic.

I rolled my eyes and turned away from her, grabbing the brush and yanking it through my own hair. “I mean—” I sighed, exasperated. “Just think of how poor Persephone felt.”

“Persephone?” She said it slowly, like she wasn’t following.

“Yeah. He was totally charming her, like the whole time he was Joel.”

She was silent for what felt like an eternity. Then just when I was sure the silence was about to become something real, something that could break and shatter, she cleared her throat. “You’re right. That must have been terrible. I wasn’t thinking.” Her hand touched my shoulder, a quick, quiet gesture of comfort, and I sucked in my breath.

I could count on one hand the number of times someone had touched me with any measure of kindness in my entire life.

“Not surprising for a nymph,” I muttered, putting the brush down on the dresser. “Anyway”—I kept my voice bright—“don’t ruin it. You had a nice time with a boy you liked. It was exciting and special, and
you
chose it. Don’t let all the crap that came later ruin that for you.”

She nodded.

“Hey, want to do something useful?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“We could recruit Poseidon.”

Melissa considered for a minute then shrugged. “Yeah, sure, why not.”

Chapter XXXII

Hades

It took me a while to calm down enough to sleep, but it didn’t take long to find her once I’d drifted off.

“You’re wanted at a meeting,” I told Persephone, after giving her a long kiss.

She gave me an odd look and fiddled with her necklace, a nervous gesture. “Am I in trouble?”

The vision of a principal’s office flashing through her mind made me laugh. “No.”

“You sounded pretty serious.”

“Yeah well, we’ve got everyone together, so it’s time to move on with our plan. Only there’s some disagreement as to what we do next.”

She weaved her fingers through mine. “Let’s go then.”

I closed my eyes and the dream shifted. When I opened them we stood in the middle of nothing. Featureless walls closed us in, blending in with the natural oblivion of an unfocused dreamscape. It’s hard to agree on a neutral dreamspace for this many gods.

When Persephone saw the sheer number of gods that had gathered, she let out a soft exclamation of surprise. Almost every living deity left in creation crowded together in the dreamscape. There were just some things we couldn’t risk Aphrodite knowing.

“Took you long enough.” Apollo leaned against the wall, arms crossed.

Demeter ran forward and threw her arms around Persephone. “Gods!” Her voice was choked with emotion. “How I’ve missed you.”

Persephone clung to her mother with equal fervor, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Mom!”

The other gods looked down or away, giving them time before we got down to business.

“So, how do we kill Zeus?” Apollo asked, breaking the moment. “And by we, I mean all of
us.”
His gesture took in all of Zeus’ children. “Because really, we’re the only ones who can.”

“And if she’s escaped, how do we find him?” Athena’s cold gray eyes studied Persephone with an intensity that made me nervous.

“If?” Persephone interrupted.

“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Artemis tightened her sleek black ponytail before cracking her knuckles. “Zeus is hunting all of us down. We just need bait.”

“He’s too smart to take any of us as bait,” Ares interjected. “We have to assume he knows we’ve already grouped up.”

“He does,” Persephone confirmed, her hand returning to her necklace, sliding it back and forth along the chain.

I offered her my hand before anyone else could notice the nervous gesture. I didn’t want this group knowing all my wife’s tells.

“Not her.” Hephaestus pointed to Persephone. “He’s looking for her anyway. If he were to find her—”

“Not an option,” I growled, stepping in front of Persephone.

Arguments erupted from the other gods.

“It’s a sound plan!” Athena argued.

“Her! You’re not serious!” Apollo stepped away from the wall, giving Athena an incredulous look. “She’s just a kid.”

“She’s Zeus’ blood as much as any of us are,” Thalia pointed out.

“I
said
it’s not an option!” I looked to Demeter for support, but she was strangely silent.

“I’m
not
swearing my power over to a teenager,” Artemis interjected. “No offense.” She tilted her head toward Persephone. “But we all have much more experience fighting than you do.”

“Which is why Zeus will see any one of us coming.” Hephaestus’ mouth twitched on one side, wrinkling his mutated flesh. “But he needs her for his plan to work, so we don’t have to find him if we use her. He’ll do all the work for us.”

“Hey!” Persephone yelled over everyone else. “Don’t I get any say in this?”

“No.” I turned to her. “You don’t understand what they’re asking.”

“Then someone better start explaining,” she snapped. Everyone was still yelling back and forth to each other, so she pitched her voice louder. “If I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t help. If I can’t help, I’m not wasting my time listening to this.
I
still need sleep, you know.”

“They want you to kill Zeus.” Athena’s voice was patient.

Persephone’s eyes widened. “Kill him?” She laughed. “Me? How?”

“We’d all swear fealty to you. You’ll have enough power if we all pitch in.” Ares looked Persephone up and down and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. He at least had the grace to look uncomfortable with what he was suggesting.